On Worldbuilding

NaNoWriMo is over; my final, official word count was 55,172. I think this is pretty respectable as I've never done anything like this before and I didn't have a great deal of time to get ready before the writing began.

In skimming back over my story (which is far from a complete story) I can see that one of my biggest stumbling blocks in the actual writing was the lack of actual worldbuilding. Even though I've been reading on the medieval ages for the past ten years, I had not sat down and "created" my world in which to place the story.

I've read countless debates on the question: should you build your world before writing the story or build the world as you write the story. In the end I think this comes down to personal choice. For me, I prefer reading novels where the world is fully formed, a living thing unto itself.

It is often easy to determine while reading a book whether or not the world was fully realized in the author's mind before the story was written, mainly because there seem to be too many "coincidences" which occur with regard to the world the character lives in. I had much rather read a story in which the world exist and then seeing how the characters relate to the world in which they live.

I've decided that before beginning my re-write / revision, I am returning to my world and building it layer upon layer until it is as detailed as I believe the story will require; I truly believe this will enable me to undergo the second draft with a story with much more depth and breadth. Doing this presents me with one small danger in that I absolutely adore worldbuilding and could happily spend the rest of my life adding details to my world. Fortunately I do have a great support group who will remind me that the real purpose of all this building is to facilitate the writing.

I am going to be posting the process that I take in order to building my world and hopefully it might help some of you in building your own worlds.